Alexander Mitsch said he wished the CDU had a leader like new Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, as he accused Mrs Merkel of dragging the party to the left.

Mr Mitsch, the leader of a right-wing group within Mrs Merkel’s party, criticised her open-door immigration policy and said “new party leadership” was needed.

He told reporters: “Now after this election debacle, in which the CDU had the worst result since 1949… the party leadership is obviously not ready to correct anything.

The entire complement of Germany’s high-tech submarine fleet is out of service, and, to hear the Berlin’s defense minister tell it, it’s not a good thing.

Currently, four of the country's active-duty U-boats — short for 'unterseeboot' or undersea boat, but not to be confused with the thousands of deadly Nazi subs that terrorized the oceans during World War II — are in the process of being serviced in drydock with equipment and communications upgrades, while the two remaining ships of Germany's six U-boat fleet wait their turn.

Berlin's Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen — through spokesperson Jens Flosdorff — has observed that the current state of non-readiness in the German submarine flotilla is less than optimal.

Berlin has announced that its forces are resuming the advisory mission in northern Iraq.

According to the general command of the German Armed Forces, its units will resume with training of Peshmerga, the military force of the ruling regime in the autonomous Iraqi province of Kurdistan.

On October 16th, the German mission was temporarily suspended, following violent confrontations between the forces loyal to the federal government in Baghdad and Peshmerga in Kirkuk province.

The German mission in northern Iraq began in 2014 with the purpose of training the Peshmerga militants to fight ISIS.

Several people, including a 12-year-old boy, were injured as a knife-wielding man attacked people in the German city of Munich.
The perpetrator began assaulting pedestrians indiscriminately early on Saturday near the Rosenheimer station in east of downtown Munich.

Eight pedestrians, including a 12-year-old boy, were stabbed in five nearby locations, Hubertus Andrae, Munich police chief, said at a press-conference. Their injuries suffered were “superficial” and “non-life-threatening,” he added.

EU anti-trust regulators have raided the offices of automaker BMW in Munich, the company said, in a fresh blow to the German car industry already hit by the Dieselgate scandal.

The European Commission, which refused to confirm the company targeted, said it "can confirm that as of October 16, 2017 its officials carried out an unannounced inspection at the premises of a car manufacturer in Germany."

The inspection was related to "concerns that several German car manufacturers may have violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices," a statement said.

The commission added that Daimler was cooperating with the commission and could accordingly offer the firm leniency in the case.

"The inspection is linked to complaints against five auto companies that were reported in the media last July," BMW said in a statement that confirmed the raids.

Mrs Merkel’s CDU party had its worst parliamentary election result since 1949 in the September poll, as well as experiencing devastating losses in regional votes.

However the German Chancellor has doubled down, claiming: “I do not see what we should do differently.”

The general secretary of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the CSU, has made equally oblivious comments, claiming the Austrian election results show “that elections can be won right from the middle” - despite huge gains for the right in both Austria and Germany.

Meanwhile the CDU regional president of Saxony has stepped down after especially disastrous local election results.

ANGELA Merkel is facing calls to step down just weeks after she was re-elected German Chancellor over her plans to introduce a Muslim public holiday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, damaged by poor election results, will from Wednesday seek to forge an unlikely governing coalition from a motley crew of parties that span the political spectrum.

Merkel's conservatives, who won a September 24th vote without a clear majority, will hold exploratory talks with the liberal and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) from 12pm and then the left-leaning and environmentalist Greens from 4.30pm.

To avoid a breakdown that would force new elections, all sides will in coming weeks have to hammer out tough compromises on thorny topics from immigration to EU reform and climate policy.

Secret meetings in effort to prevent the suspension of the submarine deal, the changes Israel requested that could indicate capability to launch nuclear missiles from the submarines, and Ya'alon's claims Netanyahu pressed him on the patrol boats deal. Yedioth and DIE ZEIT uncover more details of the affair that complicated Israeli-German ties.

German media have a “particular” responsibility to finally free themselves of Israeli lobby pressure and talk about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, as would be expected of “genuine” journalism.

It is still unclear whether the cause of the fire was arson but Brückner ruled out an electronic defect as the cause. It is also unknown where on the tower the blaze began, but investigations cannot begin until the fire is completely out.

MIGRANTS in Germany will not be allowed to settle in the city of Salzgitter, Lower Saxony, following a decree made by officials.

The campaign to force the German government to pay billions – if not trillions – of euros to Poland in damages for the destruction caused during the Second World War has gained a new voice in the form of a British Conservative Member of Parliament.

Do you really think that the Catalans and the Basques in Spain, or the Corsicans in France, will always suffer that they are ruled from Brussels by "tailoring" and taking money? Or imagine, for example, that a German government is at the head of some of the Brussels government? Well, that would smash Europe!
Germany has its equivalents to Catalonia - in the extreme, at least in economic terms. But how likely is the Catalan scenario?

Champions League in Independence: Bayern holds the fist of Barsi

"Should I stay or should I go?" (Whether to leave or to stay) - this verse from the hit of the punk band "Klech" embodies the issue raised in a referendum last week in Catalonia:

"Stay or go?"

Ninety percent of Catalans voted for secession from Spain. The Spanish Government does not recognize the results of the vote. Can a similar referendum be held in Germany?

Two weeks after winning elections with a reduced majority, Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed on Sunday to limit Germany's refugee intake in a bid to unite her conservative camp ahead of tough coalition talks to form a new government.

Reichenbach: A train laden with tanks rolled through the Vogtland in the direction of Dresden or Leipzig on Thursday between 9 and 10 o'clock.

Though news of conspicuous train movements usually get around among the railfans and hobby photographers along the route, it was different this time.

The homeland researcher and author Gero Fehlhauer was out for a stroll and accidentally witnessed the train's entrance to Reichenbach and photographed it with his cellphone.
Fehlhauer wondered that he wasn't running into the usual railfans. "Perhaps the tank train was unpublished this time," he says.

Germany’s foreign minister has expressed concern that US President Donald Trump is “likely to quit” the Iranian nuclear deal next week. Germany along with other EU states has been a staunch supporter of the agreement brokered by Barack Obama’s administration.

Breaking the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is a great concern to Germany as it brings new risks to international security and effectively would change the world, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Sunday.

If Catalonia secedes from Spain, it could be a precedent for similar developments in Germany, chairman of the Bavarian Party, Florian Weber, said, commenting on experts' recent assumptions that the Catalan scenario may result in the spread of pro-independence aspirations among other EU member states.

The Bavarian sister party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has said her conservative bloc must agree policies on immigration, pensions and healthcare before opening coalition negotiations with two other parties.

Fresh off his election success, Alexander Gauland discusses refugees, German identity, and the legacy of the Nazis.

The president explained that he was talking about the walls between "city and country, online and offline, poor and rich, old and young, walls, behind which one hardly knows anything about the other."

ANGELA Merkel is facing a hostile takeover as right-wing politicians plot to take control of her party after disappointing election results.

A failed asylum seeker accused of raping a girl in front of her own boyfriend at a German nature reserve has lashed out in court, calling the alleged victim a "prostitute."

The defendant, identified as 31-year-old 'Eric X' from Ghana, is charged with aggravated rape and predatory blackmail.

FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron has abused Angela Merkel’s underwhelming election result by pushing for France to lead a European Empire, a Paris-based journalist has claimed.

The genuine history of World War II has fallen prey to numerous falsifications aimed at downplaying and erasing the predominate role of the Red Army in destroying Nazi Germany from people's memories, Michael Jabara Carley, a professor of history at the Université de Montréal and the author of "Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations," told Sputnik.

An unknown person poisoned food in supermarkets in the south German town of Friedrichshafen after trying to blackmail supermarkets, police said on Thursday. The tainted products included baby foods.

The news hit the wire this morning that the first casualty of Sunday’s German elections is Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble. Coalition talks between Chancellor Angela Merkel and both the Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens led to this.

Merkel’s weak showing forced this change. Christian Lidner, head of the FDP, has been angling for the finance minister job during this entire election season. He has also, along with former SDP head and current Finance Minister Sigmar Gabriel, been an outspoken advocate of normalization of relations with Russia.

“We have to get out of the dead-end sitution,” Lindner told the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper chain. “To break a taboo, I fear that we must see the Crimea as a permanent provisional arrangement, at least for now.”

You can’t make this crap up even if you tried.

According to Göring-Eckardt, the demands of the AfD on a ban on foreign-funded mosques and the statement that Islam is not part of Germany, “Of course, Islam belongs to Germany, and of course Muslims belong to Germany. And I think, we can be quite happy about it. And I think we can be very happy about that. It would be very boring if we had only to deal with us. “

Angela Merkel's CDU has emerged as the biggest party in the Bundeswahl, tainted however by a collapsing vote share and the rise of Alternative for Germany (AfD). Experts have told Sputnik she may not have many days as Chancellor left as a result, while the AfD may prove of service to German political culture.

A German court on Wednesday sentenced a Syrian refugee to three-and-a-half years in prison over the kidnapping of a UN peacekeeper, finding him guilty of complicity in a war crime.

Twenty-six-year-old Suliman al-S. was arrested in January 2016, becoming the first asylum seeker in Germany to face charges over alleged war crimes committed in Syria.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended an election campaign that left her conservative bloc in first place but significantly weakened as she embarked Monday on what could be a lengthy quest to form a new government.

Merkel said the success of a nationalist, anti-migrant party that finished third in Sunday’s election won’t influence her foreign, European and refugee policies. She once more defended her decision to let in large numbers of migrants, saying Germany wouldn’t again face the humanitarian crisis that let to it.

Almost half of the individuals suspected of a recorded crime in Berlin last year were individuals who don’t have a German passport, the latest police statistics show.

The main result of these elections is undoubtedly the relative failure of the three major parties, the Christian Democratic Union, Christian Social Union, and Social Democratic Party. The 2017 parliamentary elections are the worst in history for the oldest German party, the Social Democratic Party, and for CDU/CSU the smallest margin since 1949. Although the CDU/CSU bloc has kept its position in parliament as the biggest faction, its leader, Angela Merkel, has not hid her disappointment, admitting that she hoped for a better outcome for her bloc.

Hundreds of anti-fascist activists (Antifa) gathered in Berlin on Sunday to protest the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s gains in the parliamentary elections, with crowds chanting “Go away,” “Nazi pigs,” and “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here.”

WILLIAM Hague has called the Alternative for Germany (AfD) shock election results "a wake up call to a complacent Europe" and warned the bloc's super powers now had to think seriously about how to tackle immigration.

The rise of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) dominates the headlines, but the most significant outcome of the German election is that Angela Merkel’s days as Chancellor are probably numbered. This has grave implications for Europe and the wider world.

Germany’s new Nazis see Israel as role model

THE pound jumped against the euro, after the German Election resulted in Chancellor Angela Merkel losing vote share to far right party AfP.

The current election result is a turning point for Germany. The far-right populist AfD has entered parliament for the first time, and Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a hit, says DW Editor-in-Chief Ines Pohl.

Angela Merkel will serve as Germany's chancellor for a fourth term, but Sunday's win comes at a high price. The right-wing populists are now the third-strongest party in parliament and her negotiations to create a new government are likely to be complicated.

Preliminary results of the German parliamentary election are revealed.

Merkel’s CDU/CSU union is currently in the lead, while it seems that the right-wing opposition party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) will move as the third strongest party into Bundestag.

For the grand CDU/SPD coalition, the results are rather disappointing.

The CDU leader was victorious according to exit polls but the result was tempered by Alternative for Germany, the right-wing populist party, winning its first seats in the Bundestag.

She told supporters: "Obviously we hav a new challenge ahead of us and that's the presence of the AfD in the German parliament.

"We will carefully analyse the results because we want to win AfD voters back by looking at their concerns and especially by making good policies."

A poll published by public broadcaster ZDF on Friday shows that both the major parties are likely to suffer major losses, while the small right-wing parties are on the rise.

The ZDF Politikbarometer poll shows Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) on 36 percent support, with the Social Democrats (SPD) on a miserable 21.5 percent.

Germany’s two largest parties have been united in a “grand coalition” since 2013, a fact which appears to have led to an erosion in support for both of them.

With so many voters apparently still undecided about who to pick on Sunday, parties have taken to advertizing in several languages, desperate for every vote they can get.

When readers in Germany opened their newspapers earlier this month, they likely weren't surprised to see a full-page campaign advertisement from Chancellor Angela Merkel. The country’s Bundestag elections are, after all, this Sunday.

But if most Germans had started to read the advert, they would have found the text unintelligible. Merkel’s message to voters was written in Turkish, and was printed in Öztürk – a monthly newspaper for Turkish Germans.

A senior official of the Alternative for Germany party told Sputnik that Germany should leave the European Union and improve its ties with Russia.

That last sentence is very cryptic. I do not know what they mean. Do they mean to say that most who will vote in Berlin, will vote for others such as AfD? There’s no explanation for this, and comments are disabled on the original video.

Two days before German federal elections, Angela Merkel, who is going for a fourth term as Chancellor, found her closing campaign rally in Munich crashed by right-wing protesters, who booed and heckled her for half an hour as she made her speech.

The loud heckling and whistling was audible on RT Ruptly’s live feed from the Friday rally even before Merkel began to speak, and the organizers eventually had to raise the mic’s volume. This did not prevent the German leader from giving her prepared 30-minute speech, but she added an improvised detail as an opening remark to her opponents.

“With whistling and yelling, one will surely not shape Germany’s future,” Merkel told the protesters on the last day election campaigning is allowed to take place.

German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) intends, once elected to the Bundestag, to launch a parliamentary commission to investigate decision of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to open borders in 2015, without seeking approval from the parliament, a party candidate to the Bundestag in the forthcoming election, Waldemar Birkle, confirmed to Sputnik on Friday.

"Merkel violated the law. This decision [on the opening of the borders] should have been taken by the Bundestag. And this did not happen," Birkle said.

As the clock ticks down to elections Sunday, Germany's cyber defence nervously hopes it'll be third time lucky after Russia was accused of meddling in the US and French votes.

But even if Berlin avoids a last-minute bombshell of leaks or online sabotage, it sees Moscow's hand in fanning fears of Muslim migrants that are driving the rise of the hard-right.

Four days ahead of the parliamentary election, posters can be seen in the center of Berlin, and not far from Reichstag.

There would be nothing unusual about these posters, if it wasn’t for the photo of the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the text that reads “Vote Putin for Chancellor” right below it.

The posters, which are designed in the style of those used in the CDU’s election campaign, shine a light on the huge gap between the policies of the German government and the actual public opinion on Russia.

EXCLUSIVE: Angela Merkel’s immigration policy has been savaged as the cause of Brexit in a scathing interview with the politician who hopes to steal her seat in the German election.

Hello Jeff - Here is the proof that the co infection of Relapse Fever/Malaria came to Germany via Afghanistan. REFUGEE Transmitted Disease. What more can we say. Refugees are not screened for health by UN. Germany is terribly infected country with everything from TB to Malaria, to Typhus and Malaria co infection Typhus. etc etc.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel has warned that any US move to scrap Iran's nuclear deal would discourage other countries from going to the negotiating table to discuss their nuclear activities.

A collapse of the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), would send a “terrible signal” for other diplomatic efforts, Gabriel said on the sidelines of a UN meeting in New York on Thursday.

“What should motivate countries like North Korea or others to enter into negotiations in the future when the one example of such a deal is being destroyed?” he asked.

Germany will do all it can to persuade the United States not to abandon the Iranian nuclear agreement, whatever the outcome of German elections on Sunday, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Thursday.

Gabriel told reporters any US move to cancel the Iran deal and impose new sanctions on Tehran would discourage powers such as North Korea from negotiating an end to their own nuclear programmes.

Germany would work with the European Union, France, Britain and where possible China and Russia to press Washington to preserve the deal, under which Iran curbed its nuclear work in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, he said on the sidelines of a UN meeting in New York.

German federal elections are Sunday, September 24. The most likely outcome of the election is another “Grand Coalition” but it will be a much-weakened coalition. And If that coalition forms again, the rightwing AfD party is poised to become the largest opposition party.

A 16-year-old girl was raped by two Afghan men near a refugee camp in Bavaria, according to German police. A third one was prevented from sexually abusing the girl by a passerby.

According to a police statement, the teenager had gathered with a large group of people outside a refugee center in the upper Bavaria municipality of Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn, located south of Munich.

As the German federal election is approaching, there is a sharp increase in attacks on Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and its supporters.

The right-wing party is mostly being targeted due to its staunch opposition to Merkel's immigration policies.

On Saturday, around a dozen of camouflaged persons attacked a group of AfD campaigners in the German city of Rostock.

A 4-member campaign team that was promoting the local candidate Stephan Schmidt, was trying to put on posters, when it was attacked by five darkly dressed and partly hooded assailants that were carrying stones.